Binding referenda will be triggered by a petition
achieving support of 10 percent of the electorate.

Referenda will be conducted either on the first Saturday
of November each year or in conjunction with a general
election.

Referenda qualifying initiated prior to March 1
will be conducted in the following November to ensure
sufficient lead-in time.

A revamped Electoral Commission
with greater resources, will conduct up to four referenda
each year.

The commission will be responsible for
ensuring that balanced dissemination of all of the facts
occurs in timely fashion.

A successful referendum result
will be achieved by simple majority and may only be vetoed
by the vote of 75 percent of all Members of Parliament
within one calendar month of the result being declared.

This veto option was a hard call.

Initially we did not
want Parliament to have any powers to veto a referendum but
we accept the advice, at home and abroad, that there might
be very rare and extreme circumstances that require a
safeguard.

We also believe that it would be extremely
unlikely under MMP to get 75 percent of the MPs to agree on
any subject, which is another safeguard in itself.

Remember all MPs have to face the electorate at the
following election.

The major benefit of CIR would be an
end to a political system in which the inner circle of a
political party secretly decides an agenda then forces MPs
to fall into line.

If you don't believe this just look at
the Maori MPs in the Labour Party who capitulated over the
abolition of the Privy Council.

They went against the
wishes of their electorate and followed the party line.

Citizens Initiated Referenda are not new.

They are
common in Switzerland where the people have voted on 300
issues over the past hundred years.

And to give an
example of CIR there, Switzerland had a referendum over
spending money to upgrade the roading system.

It failed
because voters wanted their hospitals upgraded first.

When the hospitals were completed, they voted to upgrade
the roads.

Referenda can also be used by Government to
seek endorsement or veto on moral issues and other important
policy matters.

It should not be left entirely to
citizens to do all the work in a democracy.

Their elected
representatives need to be proactive in gauging the mood of
the people on important issues.

And should that arise, in
number, a government referendum would be over and above the
four CIR.

A REDUCTION IN THE SIZE OF PARLIAMENT

In
1999 New Zealanders voted to reduce the size of Parliament
to 99 MPs and the Commission on Electoral Reform said
Parliament could operate with this number.

However, when
MMP legislation was introduced, the two old parties,
National and Labour, put the MMP number at 120 and FPP at 99
in the hope that people would reject the new, fairer voting
system in favour of the old.

In short, the politicians at
the time tried to deceive the people.

New Zealand First
will honour the result of that 1999 referendum to reduce the
number of MPs to 99.

The loss of 21 MPs would benefit the
country and would actually result in considerable
savings.

A REDUCED CABINET OF 14

Under Labour there are
nearly 30 ministers and hangers-on with their trotters
planted firmly in the public trough.

These people are not
there for their political nous or administrative genius.

Most are political hacks who have hung out with Labour in
the hope that their unthinking and uncritical loyalty to the
party would be rewarded.

Just like in the bad old days of
National.

A New Zealand First-led administration would
promote to Cabinet MPs with particular talents and not
necessarily according to party affiliations.

The most
qualified person should get the job.

Do we really need an
associate minister of arts or six ministers of social
development? How does the minister in charge of the Public
Trust manage to fill his day? And what has the Minister for
Auckland ever done for Auckland?

CONCLUSION

Those who
have used and abused power will not give it up lightly and
there will be some violent objections to this policy
released today.

It will be anathema to our political
opponents and the entrenched bureaucracy.

Politicians of
all political persuasions, belong to a group who believe
that they, and only they, know what's best for the people.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than on the Privy
Council vote.

The intellectually arrogant elite in
government and bureaucratic circles did not want ordinary
New Zealanders to vote on this hugely important
constitutional matter.

They felt that ordinary people
would "not understand it," although 80 percent of the people
said they wanted a say!

This was a shocking abuse of
power and a glaring example of WHY we should have Citizens
Initiated Referenda.

We desperately need checks and
balances and a system that makes politicians accountable.

We simply have to trust the people and to rely on their
good will and commonsense.

In a democracy people have the
right to govern themselves and take matters into their own
hands when their MPs fail them.

When people elect a
government to safeguard their society, their security,
culture, their liberty and their future, their elected
representatives must listen to them.

Democracy is lost
when that elected government and its officials fail to hear
the voices of the people.

It is then that ordinary people
have a moral duty to rise up and restore democracy
themselves.

New Zealand First will give the people of New
Zealand the tools to break the political chains that bind
them for three years between elections.

"We will go into
a coalition with the people - the only true coalition we
want or need in a real democracy."

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